Family doctor reveals he has starred in the Archers for 30 years... and his patients were none the wiser

Anybody married to Lynda Snell, the interfering busybody on The Archers, would hardly want to brag about it.

Which might just explain why the real life doctor who also plays her husband on the radio soap opera kept his acting quiet from his patients.

Graham Blockley has led a double life for the past 30 years. For most of the week, Dr Blockley has practised as a GP in Dorking in Surrey, tending to patients and their every medical need.

But on Thursday afternoons and at weekends, he is transformed into Robert Snell, the "genial" husband of Ambridge’s most tenacious female resident, whose amateur dramatic productions are the highlight of the village’s calendar.

Dr Blockley has now announced his retirement as a doctor to spend more time as a thespian. For years, he kept his secondary career secret from patients, not least so Archer’s fans who attended his practice and did not want to have their image of him spoiled by being confronted by the real life "Robert Snell".

“Some people know, some people don’t know and I haven’t made a big thing of it,” said Dr Blockley, 61, “There’s something to be said for the image of a radio character in people’s mind.

“If they actually see that you look completely different to what they imagined, that can be disappointing [for them].”

Dr Blockley has appeared on the Radio 4 soap opera, the longest running in the world, since 1986. He began at The Leith Hill Practice in Dorking in 1993 but retired on Wednesday.

Graham Blockey outside his practice in Dorking, SurreyCredit: SWNS

He qualified as a doctor in 1979 in Newcastle and worked for a couple of years at London hospitals before enrolling at drama school.

“I was an actor for eight years or so but I was doing local medical jobs at the same time,” said Dr Blockley, who is married to cookery writer Christine Ingram with whom he has two grown-up children. His career included (inevitably perhaps) a single episode on the BBC hospital drama Casualty, playing a medical registrar.

Unable to make the acting career pay and with children to feed, he went back to the medical profession and trained as a GP, fitting The Archers’ episodes around his day job.

He said: “I could only do it [The Archers] at weekends and Thursday afternoons.

“It’s recorded in Birmingham but they have been very tolerant, I have to say.

“They could easily have recast me and got a more available actor.”

On the BBC’s The Archers’ website, Robert Snell is described as “a genial sort of chap”. It adds: “Lynda is not the easiest of women but he seems able to deal with her domineering nature admirably, so much so that she is often putty in his hands.”

Of Lynda Snell, it says: “Love her or hate her, she certainly gets things done.”